The guy is deceptively technical. Try that punch that he does. Rewind tape of it, and try to emulate that movement. It's common in Shaolin Kungfu, but it's not just your regular old haymaker, which is half hook. half cross. What Roy does has a much more different trajectory, and is really hard to block if you are not used to that weapon. It really is an opposite hand step in ridge hand strike, and it's probably easiest to practice that way, as a ridge hand strike. I was showing a friend yesterday, and it's been so long since I've practiced that technique that I couldn't get the mechanics right until I switched to ridge hand. It's a common way of board and brick breaking, because, as Roy has shown, it's a great way to naturally generate tons of power from your boday. Of course, I know a lot of Kung Fu practitioners (before I did anything else, my parents had me practicing Shaolin Kungfu starting from when I was 13 or so), and not a single one can just KTFO huge dudes with one punch pretty much at will...

Notice how small is the crook in Roy's arm, and the position of his body, in the picture below. The power comes from his entire body moving as he steps in the punch.

Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen is great for someone with no culinary background. My boss bought me the America's Test Kitchen family cookbook the christmas before last and it's a lot of "do no wrong" recipes--they test the fuck out every recipe and have a very "we tried a bunch of shit and this was the best way to do it" attitude towards cooking.

I'm currently cooking my way through their 'science of good cooking' book and cook a lot of shit from their "slow cooker revolution' book. The show/podcast is pretty great too.

Though I don't cook a ton of pork. The only pork i've made were some slow cooked/broiled BBQ ribs:

Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen is great for someone with no culinary background. My boss bought me the America's Test Kitchen family cookbook the christmas before last and it's a lot of "do no wrong" recipes--they test the fuck out every recipe and have a very "we tried a bunch of shit and this was the best way to do it" attitude towards cooking.

I'm currently cooking my way through their 'science of good cooking' book and cook a lot of shit from their "slow cooker revolution' book. The show/podcast is pretty great too.

NG: From the fact that there was no one helping me on the business side, for example.

Can you be more specific?

NG: They wanted to open up a load of stores but in really mediocre spaces, where people weren’t aware of the brand. It was a strategy that I just couldn’t relate to. I found this garage space on Faubourg-Saint-Honoré; I got in contact with the real estate guy who’s a friend of a friend, and we started talking… And when I went back to Balenciaga, the reaction was, ‘Oh no, no, no, not Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, you can’t be serious?’ And I said yes really, the architecture is amazing, it’s not a classic shop. Oh really, really… then six months went by, six long months of negotiations… it was just so frustrating. Everything was like that.

...When was the first time you felt your ambitions for the house were no longer compatible with Balenciaga’s management?

NG: It was all the time, but especially over the last two or three years it became one frustration after another. It was really that lack of culture which bothered me in the end. The strongest pieces that we made for the catwalk got ignored by the business people. They forgot that in order to get to that easily sellable biker jacket, it had to go via a technically mastered piece that had been shown on the catwalk. I started to become unhappy when I realised that there was no esteem, interest, or recognition for the research that I’d done; they only cared about what the merchandisable result would look like. This accelerated desire meant they ignored the fact that all the pieces that remain the most popular today are from collections we made ten years ago. They have become classics and will carry on being so. Although the catwalk was extremely rich in ideas and products, there was no follow-up merchandising. With just one jacket we could have triggered whole commercial strategies. It’s what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do everything. I was switching between the designs for the catwalk and the merchandisable pieces – I became Mr Merchandiser. There was never a merchandiser at Balenciaga, which I regret terribly.

Hugh Jackman was at the table next to ours at brunch on Saturday. He is a GIANT HUMAN BEING. Definitely not really what I expected. He also looked quite a bit more weathered than I would have imagined.